Section 2 · Create your first watcher

Tell the watcher what it can't infer from telemetry, such as expected deployment errors and how quickly the service should recover.

Estimated time: 1 min

Give the watcher context

Telemetry can show that checkout errors rose. It can’t show that a short spike during a rollout is expected, or how quickly the service should recover.

When you create a watcher, you describe what to monitor and the behavior you expect, such as brief error spikes during deployments. You can also mention relevant alert rules or dashboards.

For example:

Watch the checkout service in production. Short error spikes during deploys are expected, but errors should recover within a few minutes.